Fixed Is Fixed -- Ray McGovern

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Those who have read the most recent British cabinet documents know that they show senior U.K. lawyers and diplomats desperately trying to place a veneer of legality on Prime Minister Tony Blair's promise to President George W. Bush that Britain would join the United States in launching an unprovoked attack on Iraq.

The new memos provide a wealth of information supplementing what has already been revealed—like the relatively unsung example of Elizabeth Wilmshurst, then-deputy legal adviser to the British Foreign Office. Wilmshurst kept insisting that the attack could not be squared with international law, and said it would start "a war of aggression." When her superiors caved in to Blair, Wilmshurst did the honorable thing. She resigned.

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Enter Washington insider and neoconservative favorite James Woolsey, the former director of Central Intelligence, who just a few days after 9/11 called publicly for war on Iraq. Rhodes Scholar Woolsey told MSNBC's "Hardball" Tuesday night that he is not clear on British usage of the word "fixed." Woolsey argued that what Blair was told by the U.K.'s intelligence chief does not mean that Washington was "cooking the books." Since there is no basis for that allegation, says Woolsey, "We ought to back off a bit."

An objective "source description" for intelligence reporting from Woolsey would have to include the following: "Source was assigned by then-chair of the Defense Policy Board Richard Perle to facilitate reports like the since-disproved story of a meeting between 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague, as well as the other unfortunate ones about Iraqi mobile laboratories for producing biological weapons. Source's political views may cloud his objectivity."

Tom Paine

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Or, from VIPS colleague Col. Patrick Lang, USA (ret.), former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency's human intelligence section, who tends to be more succinct: "Fixed is fixed, man."